


Angels

by hafren



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:14:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hafren/pseuds/hafren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some time after "Bounty", Blake and Avon visit Sarkoff's palace in winter</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angels

**Author's Note:**

> What can you bear that would last  
> Like a rock through cancer and white hair?
> 
> \- Edwin Morgan

On the great French window there were intricate frost-flowers. The terrace outside was inches deep in snow and the stone lions had white manes.

The young clerk sounded nervous and apologetic. "I'm so sorry President Sarkoff has been delayed, sirs. It's the weather; it's caused some sort of transport breakdown."

"Not to worry," Blake said genially. "It's a by-product of freedom and democracy. Only dictatorships make the trains run on time." He smiled at the young man, who was plainly a hero-worshipper and couldn't quite believe he was talking to legends.

"I knew there was something I liked about dictatorships," Avon observed.

The clerk eyed him shyly, debating whether to laugh because of course that had to be ironic; heroes of the revolution didn't think like that. In the end he didn't quite dare. He cleared his throat. "The President would wish me to offer you every hospitality, sirs; if I can bring you some refreshment or show you the building - the library is very fine…"

Blake patted his arm. "Actually we'd just as soon stroll round the grounds. It's ages since I had a walk in snow. You get back to whatever you were doing now, we'll be fine." The young man returned his smile and left, looking wonderingly at the arm Blake had touched. Avon suspected he probably wouldn't wash it for a week.

"What do you mean, stroll round the grounds? Have you seen what it's like out there?"

"It's beautiful. And I bet you've never walked on snow just for fun, have you?"

"Of course not. When did you?"

"Exbar, when I used to visit my uncle and Inga. It snowed a lot there. Come on."

"We'll freeze. It isn't as if we've got thermals."

"Oh, that jacket's thick enough, you'll be fine. It isn't even snowing now, more's the pity."

Actually the cold nearly took Avon's breath away when he stepped outside, but he wasn't going to admit it. His boots crunched on the snow, as if on broken glass, the sound startlingly loud in the stillness. Beyond the terrace stretched a lawn, a vast unbroken sheet of white. He  
hesitated to step on to it, to leave a mark in its perfection.

""It's amazing, isn't it? Like treading on sugar." Blake was trudging blithely through it, his eyes alight with pleasure. They walked past hedges like frozen lace, trees weighed down with whiteness. The formal gardens gave place to parkland, its slopes and hills transformed by their covering into abstract sculpture. The whiteness did odd things to the light; there was a blue tinge to everything, and the silence, the sense of things being somehow muffled, was vaguely hypnotising.

A sharp crack, just to the left, reverberated in the stillness and he spun round to see where the shot had come from.

"Relax." Blake sounded amused. "There's your assassin." He pointed to a branch, broken off the tree by the weight of snow. "They always sound like that." Avon got his breathing under control and walked on. But the incident had jolted him out of his trance-like state. He couldn't stop thinking, now, of how in the open they were, and what good targets against the white background, and how he'd surrendered his gun in the President's anteroom.

"I wonder if he's got a pond anywhere. It used to be fun sliding on frozen ponds. Of course a sledge and a good hill would be even better." Blake was smiling from ear to ear, completely at ease. He glanced at his silent companion and went quiet himself, but only for a moment.

"Hey, look!" He pointed to a slope, which might have been the side of a hill when everything was looking normal. "I'll show you how to make angels."

He stood in front of the snow-bank, his back to it and his hands by his sides, then let himself fall straight backwards into the snow. He laughed up at Avon and then, still lying back, moved his arms in semicircles through the snow, as high above his head as he could.

"Now comes the hard part." He lifted his arms out of the snow very delicately, careful not to disturb the pattern he had made, then used the strength of his upper body to pull him into a sitting position, never letting his hands touch the snow again. He rested a moment, then,awkwardly, stood up the rest of the way and sprang clear. "See?"

In the snow was the imprint of a man with great, outspread wings instead of arms. Blake looked pleased. "Not bad, considering I haven't done it in twenty years. It's easier when you're young and supple."

"No doubt. What if there happens to be rock or something else you don't know about under the bit of snow you choose?"

"You'd get hurt, I suppose. But it isn't likely. It's even better doing it on flat ground, like this." He went over like a skittle again, where he stood, and made some more wings.

"Very good. But how do you propose to get up from there? I don't fancy your chances without the slope."

Blake stretched up a hand to him. "That's how." Avon took the hand and pulled him upright, smiling despite himself at the sparkle in his eyes. The new angel was sharper than the first; Blake was delighted with it. "Brilliant! Now you. Come on, you want to, don't you?"

Oddly enough, Avon did, though he didn't quite know why. Even as a child, he hadn't been much for childish games. But part of him very much wanted to just give himself to chance, to feel that moment of release and surrender as he let himself fall back into whatever was there.

He hesitated.

"Come on. I've done it twice without finding any rocks." Blake plummeted on to another snow-bank. "Three times."

"You could do it forty-three times and not find any. They'd probably be waiting for the one time I tried it."

"Don't give me that." Blake struggled upright impatiently, blurring his angel's edges. He sounded almost angry. "Try here, against the slope. It'll be easier."

Avon wasn't sure if the implied challenge in "easier" had been intentional. It didn't really matter. He closed his eyes, dropped his hands to his sides and willed himself to fall straight backwards where he stood, on the flat snowfield. He gasped with the shock of the cold all around him.

"Well done," said Blake's voice above him. "Now the wings." Avon let his arms sweep the snow in a graceful arc, then lifted them clear. Blake's hand took his, ready to help him up.

There was a long pause, as if time had iced over, while Avon worked out whether it was the cold that felt like electricity tingling all the way up his arm, and why he quite wanted to stay like this for ever, like the stone lions patient under their load of snow. And then, somehow, he was upright again and looking down at the outline in the snow, slimmer and straighter than the Blake-angels.

"You're better at angels than I am," Blake said ruefully.

"Only fallen angels."

It began to snow again, and they turned back to the house. The flakes were big and loose; they drifted very slowly and settled on their heads and shoulders. Avon shook them off, at first, but Blake didn't bother. Soon his hair and eyebrows were white with them and Avon, glancing sideways at him, saw how he would look when he was old. His hand reached out, wanting to brush the eyebrows clear; he forced it back down to his side.

Sarkoff got through, eventually. They ate and talked politics, and then relaxed, listening to music, drinking, chatting of nothing. They admired their host's ornaments, and he said they were just these things he'd picked up somewhere, and he apologised for the weather, and they  
said no, it made a pleasant change. They spent a little time outside reality, away from the revolution.

And every so often Avon looked at the dark window and imagined the snow beyond it, gently filling up angel shapes.


End file.
